Mistress of the Art of Death

Mistress of the Art of Death
Author: Ariana Franklin
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2007-02-06
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1101206756

The national bestselling hit hailed by the New York Times as a "vibrant medieval mystery...[it] outdoes the competition." In medieval Cambridge, England, Adelia, a female forensics expert, is summoned by King Henry II to investigate a series of gruesome murders that has wrongly implicated the Jewish population, yielding even more tragic results. As Adelia's investigation takes her behind the closed doors of the country's churches, the killer prepares to strike again.

Grave Goods

Grave Goods
Author: Anwen Cooper
Publisher:
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2022
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789257506

A large-scale investigation into grave goods (c. 4000 BC-AD 43), enabling a new level of understanding of mortuary practice, material culture, technological innovation and social transformation.

Grave Goods

Grave Goods
Author: Ariana Franklin
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 354
Release: 2009
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780399155444

When the bodies of two people are discovered in the remains of an arson fire that destroyed Glastonbury Abbey, Adelia Aguilar, Mistress of the Art of Death, is ordered by Henry II to determine if one of the sets of bones belongs to the legendary Celtic savior Arthur.

Ritual in Early Bronze Age Grave Goods

Ritual in Early Bronze Age Grave Goods
Author: John Hunter
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 593
Release: 2014-10-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1782976949

The exotic and impressive grave goods from burials of the ÔWessex CultureÕ in Early Bronze Age Britain are well known and have inspired influential social and economic hypotheses, invoking the former existence of chiefs, warriors and merchants and high-ranking pastoralists. Alternative theories have sought to explain the how display of such objects was related to religious and ritual activity rather than to economic status, and that groups of artefacts found in certain graves may have belonged to religious specialists. This volume is the result of a major research that aimed to investigate Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age grave goods in relation to their possible use as special dress accessories or as equipment employed within ritual activities and ceremonies. Many items of adornment can be shown to have formed elements of elaborate costumes, probably worn by individuals, both male and female, who held important ritual roles within society. Furthermore, the analysis has shown that various categories of object long interpreted as mundane types of tool were in fact items of bodily adornment or implements used in ritual contexts, or in the special embellishment of the human body. Although never intended to form a complete catalogue of all the relevant artefacts from England the volume provides an extensive, and intensively illustrated, overview of a large proportion of the grave goods from English burial sites.

Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD

Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD
Author: Alex Bayliss
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 616
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351576461

The Early Anglo-Saxon Period is characterized archaeologically by the regular deposition of artefacts in human graves in England. The scope for dating these objects and graves has long been studied, but it has typically proved easier to identify and enumerate the chronological problems of the material than to solve them. Prior to the work of the project reported on here, therefore, there was no comprehensive chronological framework for Early Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, and the level of detail and precision in dates that could be suggested was low. The evidence has now been studied afresh using a co-ordinated suite of dating techniques, both traditional and new: a review and revision of artefact-typology; seriation of grave-assemblages using correspondence analysis; high-precision radiocarbon dating of selected bone samples; and Bayesian modelling using the results of all of these. These were focussed primarily on the later part of the Early Anglo-Saxon Period, starting in the 6th century. This research has produced a new chronological framework, consisting of sequences of phases that are separate for male and female burials but nevertheless mutually consistent and coordinated. These will allow archaeologists to assign grave-assemblages and a wide range of individual artefact-types to defined phases that are associated with calendrical date-ranges whose limits are expressed to a specific degree of probability. Important unresolved issues include a precise adjustment for dietary effects on radiocarbon dates from human skeletal material. Nonetheless the results of this project suggest the cessation of regular burial with grave goods in Anglo-Saxon England two decades or even more before the end of the seventh century. That creates a limited but important discrepancy with the current numismatic chronology of early English sceattas. The wider implications of the results for key topics in Anglo-Saxon archaeology and social, economic and religious history are discussed to conclude the report.

Grave Disturbances

Grave Disturbances
Author: Edeltraud Aspöck
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2020-07-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789254450

Archaeologists excavating burials often find that they are not the first to disturb the remains of the dead. Graves from many periods frequently show signs that others have been digging and have moved or taken away parts of the original funerary assemblage. Displaced bones and artefacts, traces of pits, and damage to tombs or coffins can all provide clues about post-burial activities. The last two decades have seen a rapid rise in interest in the study of post-depositional practices in graves, which has now developed into a new subfield within mortuary archaeology. This follows a long tradition of neglect, with disturbed graves previously regarded as interesting only to the degree they revealed evidence of the original funerary deposit. This book explores past human interactions with mortuary deposits, delving into the different ways graves and human remains were approached by people in the past and the reasons that led to such encounters. The primary focus of the volume is on cases of unexpected interference with individual graves soon after burial: re-encounters with human remains not anticipated by those who performed the funerary rites and constructed the tombs. However, a first step is always to distinguish these from natural and accidental processes, and methodological approaches are a major theme of discussion. Interactions with the remains of the dead are explored in eleven chapters ranging from the New Kingdom of Egypt to Viking Age Norway and from Bronze Age Slovakia to the ancient Maya. Each discusses cases of re-entries into graves, including desecration, tomb re-use, destruction of grave contents, as well as the removal of artefacts and human remains for reasons from material gain to commemoration, symbolic appropriation, ancestral rites, political chicanery, and retrieval of relics. The introduction presents many of the methodological issues which recur throughout the contributions, as this is a developing area with new approaches being applied to analyze post-depositional processes in graves.

Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning

Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning
Author: Pamela Sachant
Publisher: Good Press
Total Pages: 614
Release: 2023-11-27
Genre: Art
ISBN:

Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning offers a deep insight and comprehension of the world of Art. Contents: What is Art? The Structure of Art Significance of Materials Used in Art Describing Art - Formal Analysis, Types, and Styles of Art Meaning in Art - Socio-Cultural Contexts, Symbolism, and Iconography Connecting Art to Our Lives Form in Architecture Art and Identity Art and Power Art and Ritual Life - Symbolism of Space and Ritual Objects, Mortality, and Immortality Art and Ethics

The Use of Grave-goods in Conversion-period England, C.600-c.850

The Use of Grave-goods in Conversion-period England, C.600-c.850
Author: Helen Geake
Publisher:
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1997
Genre: History
ISBN:

This study comprises a descriptive analysis of the entire range of Anglo-Saxon grave goods and an exploration of their causes and meanings from the 7th and 8th centuries, a time when kingdoms went through far-reaching changes in their ideologies, trade relationships and social structures. The first half of the book consists of discussion of identification of the data, the grave-goods types, the cultural affliations of grave-goods and interpretation of the data. The second half consists of a gazetteer of conversion-period Anglo-Saxon burial sites, numerous maps and pages of figures illustrating the artefacts. Geake concludes that the grave-goods from this period expressed a `pan-English neo-classical' identity, an Anglo-Saxon imperial ideology, drawing heavily on Roman prototypes and that this identity was promoted by the church and the state to legitimise the power of their hierarchies.

Stereotype

Stereotype
Author: Karsten Wentink
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2020-07-15
Genre:
ISBN: 9789088909399

Throughout northern Europe, thousands of burial mounds were erected in the third millennium BCE. Starting in the Corded Ware culture, individual people were being buried underneath these mounds, often equipped with an almost rigid set of grave goods. This practice continued in the second half of the third millennium BCE with the start of the Bell Beaker phenomenon. In large parts of Europe, a 'typical' set of objects was placed in graves, known as the 'Bell Beaker package'.This book focusses on the significance and meaning of these Late Neolithic graves. Why were people buried in a seemingly standardized manner, what did this signify and what does this reveal about these individuals, their role in society, their cultural identity and the people that buried them?By performing in-depth analyses of all the individual grave goods from Dutch graves, which includes use-wear analysis and experiments, the biography of grave goods is explored. How were they made, used and discarded? Subsequently the nature of these graves themselves are explored as contexts of deposition, and how these are part of a much wider 'sacrificial landscape'.A novel and comprehensive interpretation is presented that shows how the objects from graves were connected with travel, drinking ceremonies and maintaining long-distance relationships.

Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages

Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages
Author: Bonnie Effros
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2003-03-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520928180

Clothing, jewelry, animal remains, ceramics, coins, and weaponry are among the artifacts that have been discovered in graves in Gaul dating from the fifth to eighth century. Those who have unearthed them, from the middle ages to the present, have speculated widely on their meaning. This authoritative book makes a major contribution to the study of death and burial in late antique and early medieval society with its long overdue systematic discussion of this mortuary evidence. Tracing the history of Merovingian archaeology within its cultural and intellectual context for the first time, Effros exposes biases and prejudices that have colored previous interpretations of these burial sites and assesses what contemporary archaeology can tell us about the Frankish kingdoms. Working at the intersection of history and archaeology, and drawing from anthropology and art history, Effros emphasizes in particular the effects of historical events and intellectual movements on French and German antiquarian and archaeological studies of these grave goods. Her discussion traces the evolution of concepts of nationhood, race, and culture and shows how these concepts helped shape an understanding of the past. Effros then turns to contemporary multidisciplinary methodologies and finds that we are still limited by the types of information that can be readily gleaned from physical and written sources of Merovingian graves. For example, since material evidence found in the graves of elite families and particularly elite men is more plentiful and noteworthy, mortuary goods do not speak as directly to the conditions in which women and the poor lived. The clarity and sophistication with which Effros discusses the methods and results of European archaeology is a compelling demonstration of the impact of nationalist ideologies on a single discipline and of the struggle toward the more pluralistic vision that has developed in the post-war years.